The NY State Capitol. Image Credit: Mike Groll, Governor’s Office.
By Jim Caras
A New York City mayor described by the periodicals of the day as a “dapper” dresser with “swagger.” A mayor who spent nights out on the town and had a reserved table at his favorite club. A mayor accused of misusing his office for personal gain. Charges leveled against him by a respected government official after an investigation. The mayor claiming, in a presidential election year, that the allegations were politically motivated to divert attention from unpopular national policies. A dogged and upright anti-corruption public servant who did not back down. And a governor with the power to decide the mayor’s fate under a provision of the New York City Charter. New York City in 2024/2025? No. New York City in 1932.
One hundred years ago, James J. “Jimmy” Walker was elected mayor of New York City. In the issue of Time magazine published the week after his inauguration in January 1926, Time commented on the new mayor’s “dapper“ style and “swagger.” But for his early resignation, his second term should have lasted to usher in the end of prohibition. However, in spite of the fact that liquor was illegal during his entire tenure, he reportedly had his own table in the wine cellar adjoining the 21 Club where he could apparently often be found at night. According to a 2002 New York Times article, Walker is reported to have said ”It’s a sin to go to bed on the same day you get up.”
During his second term an inquiry by the New York State Legislature “To investigate the Administration of the Various Departments of the Government of the City…” turned its focus on Mayor Walker himself. According to the Memorandum of New York State Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt (reprinted in full in the New York Times on January 1, 1933, the “Governor’s Memo” or “Memorandum”), the counsel of the joint legislative committee, Judge Samuel Seabury, forwarded to the governor the transcripts of the investigation along with 15 “conclusions” based upon the committee’s work.
According to the Governor’s Memo and Mayor Walker’s Answer to the Governor dated July 28, 1932 (“Mayor’s Answer”) these were not formally submitted charges by the legislative committee but had been submitted by Seabury on his own. The following day, a petition by William Schieffelin adopting Seabury’s “conclusions” as “charges” was submitted to the governor on behalf of an organization called the New York Committee of One Thousand. (According to the Mayor’s Answer, Shieffelin was the head of the government reform group the Citizens Union although he was submitting the petition on behalf of a newly formed organization). In addition, on the same day, a number of “business and professional men, residents, voters and taxpayers… [a]ll enrolled Democrats,” in a letter with a petition for removal, forwarded their own charges against the mayor for “inefficiency and gross misfeasance in office” (as opposed to ”only issues of personal corruption and unexplained wealth”) to the governor for consideration (Letter of James E. Finegan to Governor Roosevelt, June 9, 1932).
Documents relating to the charges including the Mayor’s Answer and Judge Seabury’s reply to the Mayor’s Answer reveal that the Governor was presented with allegations and supporting evidence that (1) the mayor allowed his top government lawyer, the city’s corporation counsel, to appoint doctors “to act on behalf of the city in compensation cases involving city employees” who were associated with the mayor’s brother, Dr. William H. Walker, and who split their fees with Dr. Walker; (2) the mayor had steered a bus franchise to a company that lacked the financial ability to carry it out because his friend had a stake in the company; (3) entities and/or individuals either doing business or interested in doing business with the City gave substantial gratuities or arranged for payments to the mayor; (4) accounts had been created by associates of the mayor, with the balances in some of the accounts reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars apparently in the absence of investment of the funds while funds from these accounts were subsequently paid out to the mayor ($261,000 in one account was allegedly paid to Walker the day before he and his wife set sail for Europe in 1927); and (5) the mayor’s financial agent who was involved in many of these accounts and/or payments absconded to Mexico and subsequently disappeared to evade the reach of authorities..
The mayor’s general response to the entire proceedings against him was essentially that it was a politically motivated witch hunt to detract attention from the economic crisis gripping the nation. Walker wrote:
[The investigation]… was conceived, born and fostered in politics…. This partisan political committee was created… for the express purpose… to blacken the reputation of the City Administration and thus to divert public attention from those responsible for the dreadful condition of affairs throughout the nation.
The petitions sought removal of Mayor Walker pursuant to New York City Charter section 122, which, according to court documents, stated:
The mayor may be removed from office by the governor in the same manner as sheriffs, except that the governor may direct the inquiry provided by law to be conducted by the attorney-general; and after the charges have been received by the governor, he may, pending the investigation, suspend the mayor for a period not exceeding thirty days.
The State Constitution, according to court documents, authorized the removal of sheriffs as follows:
The governor may remove any officer in this section mentioned, within the term for which he shall have been elected; giving to such officer a copy of the charges against him, and an opportunity of being heard in his defense.
(Section 9 of the current New York City charter contains a similar provision for removal of a mayor by the governor “after service upon him of a copy of the charges and an opportunity to be heard in his defense,” without reference to the Constitutional provision for removal of sheriffs.)
After receipt of the communication from Judge Seabury and the petitions from Schieffelin and Fineman, Governor Roosevelt on August 5, 1932 requested in a letter to Mayor Walker that he “appear before me at the Executive Chamber in Albany on Thursday August eleventh…in order that you may be heard in respect to the charges filed with me by Honorable Samuel Seabury[,] Mr. William J. Schieffelin and Mr. James E. Finegan…”
On August 11, 1932 the governor commenced a hearing in the Executive Chambers in Albany. Mayor Walker and his counsel attended. Governor Roosevelt relied on the evidence submitted by Judge Seabury in the form of the investigative transcripts but offered to subpoena witnesses at the request of the mayor and in fact signed subpoenas for witnesses on which charges were based, according to the Governor’s Memo. According to the Memorandum and the Mayor’s Answer, Mayor Walker argued that charges based upon events that occurred in his first term in office could not be used to remove him from office in his second term. He also argued that materials from the Legislative Committee investigation could not be used as evidence – but rather that he had the right to confront the actual witnesses against him, and objected that the majority of witnesses before the Legislative Committee had testified in private.
Governor Roosevelt rejected these arguments and a lawsuit was brought on behalf of Mayor Walker in State Supreme Court in Albany seeking to prevent the governor from removing him from the mayor’s office (Donnelly v. Roosevelt, 144 Misc. 525 (S.Ct. Albany 1932). On August 29, 1932, the judge confirmed the constitutionality of the New York City Charter provision but agreed with Mayor Walker that a hearing should afford the opportunity to confront witnesses and that the removal power should only extend to actions that occurred during the current term of office and that would constitute official misconduct, violation of public trust, or moral turpitude.
However, the court noted that the governor, “stand[ing] upon his prerogative as executive” had “declined to submit himself or the subject matter of this proceeding to the jurisdiction of the court.” The court ruled that it did not have the power to coerce compliance by the governor with its decision through an order of prohibition. The governor, in his Memorandum, defended his conduct of the hearing, scolding the judge for his “gratuitous advice” and maintaining his right to act not as a judge but as the state’s chief executive with a duty to essentially hold subordinate officials to account.
Three days after the court ruled and declined to enjoin the governor, the mayor received a letter from his counsel, telling his client that the governor’s assertion of immunity from process enabled him to deny his client a “fair trial” and allowed him to act as “judge, prosecutor and [presidential] candidate, all in one” (Letter from John J. Curtain to James J. Walker, September 1, 1932). Later that same day, Mayor Jimmy Walker resigned from office and the governor’s hearing was subsequently closed.
According to the New York Times, in the article accompanying its reprint of the Governor’s Memo (Roosevelt Reviews Walker Hearing, January 1, 1933), Roosevelt wrote the Governor’s Memo and submitted it to the Attorney General because he believed “the Walker case in the future would be referred to in other cases involving the power of removal…by the Governor…”
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Jim Caras is an Adjunct Professor at New York Law School and Senior Fellow in its Center for New York City and State Law. Before his recent retirement from City government, he served as General Counsel to the New York City Council and Special Counsel to the Speaker. He also served as Finance Counsel to the Council and Acting Finance Director.